As U.S. economy sinks
Bush, Pentagon plot criminal war on Iraq
Independent anti-war fight needed
By Deirdre Griswold
A world crisis is rapidly developing. The form it takes
right now is preparation for an all-out war against Iraq by the
Bush administration and the Pentagon.
The Pentagon is reportedly shipping huge amounts of military
equipment from its bases in Europe to the Middle East, and the
number of U.S. troops in the area is ballooning.
The Herald of Scotland reported on Aug. 16 that "The
Pentagon has moved 50,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines
within striking distance of Iraq in the past 10 months under
cover of deployments targeting global terrorism, according to
senior UK military sources.
"The quiet buildup includes the presence of up to five
nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, each with an attack force of
between 70 and 80 jets."
There are also "several U.S. Marine expeditionary forces,
infantry battalions backed by helicopter gunships, tanks and
armored personnel carriers, embarked on special assault ships
in and around the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf."
The Scottish newspaper adds that "it is clear that
preparations are being made for an aerial campaign which could
be waged even if neighboring states such as Saudi Arabia and
Jordan refuse to allow the use of their airfields for offensive
action."
The storming of the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin on Aug. 20 by a
small group calling themselves dissident Iraqis has been
denounced by Baghdad as the work of U.S. and Israeli agents.
While the White House denies this, as is to be expected, the
brief hostage-taking episode is at the very least the product
of the expectations that a coming U.S. war would arouse among
opportunists wanting to be included in a puppet government.
That it took place in Berlin, however, raises suspicions of
more direct U.S. involvement, since the Bush administration has
been angered by the refusal of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to
give support to its war against Iraq during his campaign
speeches.
Toothless criticism
The capitalist media all over the world are full of
speculation as to whether the attack will begin sooner or
later; whether President George W. Bush will be able to round
up support from any U.S. "allies"; whether the meeting with
most of his top aides in Crawford, Texas, on Aug. 21 was
secretly meant to finalize plans for the war; and whether the
subdued words of caution coming from a few old Republican hands
will make any difference.
All the discussions within the organs and councils of the
ruling class in the U.S. take for granted that the right-wing
cabal running the government--this grouping so intimately tied
to the scandal-ridden, criminal corporate world--has the right
to kill tens of thousands of Iraqi people in the pursuit of its
aims. Not said openly, but underlying all their analysis, is
the old imperial maxim, "Might makes right."
Nor should anyone think that the veterans of Bush senior's
1991 war now speaking up have any scruples when it comes to
putting U.S. troops in "harm's way," either. Their only concern
is that too many body bags coming home could ignite a firestorm
of opposition and spoil their plans for total domination of the
oil-rich lands where Europe, Asia and North Africa meet.
As the GIs found out all too well during the Vietnam War,
the officer class and their buddies in the military-industrial
complex consider the young workers in uniform as nothing more
than a category of their war machine.
They are valued for the large sums of money spent on their
training--not because they are Joe or Jane or Rasheed or Juana,
with personalities and dreams and hopes. On the contrary,
military training is meant to obliterate as much as possible
the quirky and charming individual traits of each unique person
and turn sensitive human beings into automated killing
machines.
Lest anyone think these criminals' tears for their fallen
troops are anything but crocodilian, just look at the shabby
treatment of veterans, whose medical and other benefits are
being cut even as young recruits are being rushed overseas for
a new war.
Gangsterism against a small country
Those in the capitalist establishment who worry about the
outcome of the coming war never admit that U.S. policy toward
Iraq for decades has been nothing but a heinous exercise of
gangsterism against a small country that is virtually
defenseless in comparison to the massive high-tech firepower of
the Pentagon. All the scare talk about "weapons of mass
destruction" and "axis of evil" is just a public-relations scam
to obscure the obvious--the U.S., not Iraq, is the Darth Vader
the world fears.
The commentators here never seem to get around to even
mentioning that the open intention of Washington to effect
"regime change"--meaning the overthrow of the Iraqi
government--is a violation of numerous international laws,
which forbid such acts of blatant aggression and interference
in the affairs of other countries.
Those laws were enacted, by the way, only after tremendous
anti-colonial upheavals throughout the Third World, when
hundreds of millions of people rebelled and threatened the
continuity of exploitation by Western and Japanese capital.
Nor do the commentators seem to remember that the U.S.
Constitution itself--which the flag-waving imperial adventurers
love to invoke as the source of their authority when they're
not claiming divine inspiration--explicitly forbids what the
president and his cabal are doing in its very first article.
The Constitution specifies that only Congress can declare
war.
From Korea more than half a century ago to the present,
every U.S. war--now euphemistically called "interventions"--has
been illegal and unconstitutional. But an "undeclared" war can
be every bit as bloody and destructive as a declared one.
The objections of the Republican foreign policy heavies who
have weighed in recently--Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Henry
Kissinger, Rep. Dick Armey--are based on their fears that the
administration is not skillful and patient enough to drag the
mass of the people along with it into this war. They are not
opposing the imperialist foreign policy of the U.S. capitalist
government, but the precipitous and clumsy way in which it is
being carried out.
Like the German generals who got the jitters before carrying
out some of Hitler's most ferocious offensives, these
Republicans also fear the horror and outrage that are sure to
follow a war, not only in the Arab countries but all over the
world. Kissinger, it should be remembered, recently had to
leave France in a hurry because of charges arising from his
role in the Chile coup and the murder of President Salvador
Allende.
Capitalist crisis drives them toward war
The determination of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul
Wolfowitz, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to
press ahead with the war, even risking criticism from members
of their own party and condemnation from other imperialist
powers, indicates that they see the stakes as very high.
But what is at stake here? Not U.S. "national security,"
which Bush claims to be defending. Iraq is no threat to the
U.S., and all attempts by the administration to link it to the
Sept. 11 attacks have been exposed as fraudulent.
The real problem is that the administration cannot tolerate
the continued defiance by the Iraqi leadership of U.S. efforts
to roll back their independence, won in 1958 by an
anti-colonial revolution, and bring their country under the
total domination of U.S. oil companies.
In the minds of the geopolitical strategists for big
business, this should be a time when U.S. hegemony is
unchallenged across the globe. They demolished the bloc of
socialist countries that had tried to exist outside their
sphere of influence and exploitation. They have brought down
many of the anti-colonial regimes in the Third World through
covert military action and overt economic sanctions. They have
told their imperialist rivals not to even question U.S.
hegemony.
Then, from a most unlikely place--right-wing fundamentalists
who had worked for the CIA in the war against a pro-socialist
Afghan government--came an attack on two symbols of U.S. power.
The administration quickly utilized the shock and backlash here
to ram through a major military buildup and another war on
Afghanistan--this time against former U.S. allies. It also gave
the green light to Israel to renew its assault on the
Palestinian people in the name of fighting "terrorism."
Bush elaborated a new doctrine: No one, big or small, could
sit on the sidelines in his spurious "war on terrorism" or they
would be considered to be aiding the "enemy." Yet even these
threats have failed to line up support for the coming war.
Now, at the moment of what should be their greatest triumph,
these political wheelers and dealers on behalf of the
billionaire ruling class find themselves confronting the
greatest and most destructive weakness of capitalism: economic
crisis is once again rearing its ugly head. A worldwide
struggle is growing among the imperialist powers over control
of the world's markets. Making it more ugly by the day is the
general crisis of overproduction that is causing
multi-billion-dollar corporations to fold and has sent the
stock markets into a tailspin.
What will the mood of the workers be at this time next year
if the crisis continues and millions of jobs are lost just when
personal debt is at an historic high and the social "safety
net" has been dismantled?
Under these circumstances, if the economic crisis deepens,
another war in Iraq can be the prelude to a period of growing
world tensions and the threat of yet another inter-imperialist
war.
The capitalist class is pulling the masses of workers into a
pit of military conflict that has no discernible bottom. Events
are unfolding that will have the most profound effect on
millions all over the globe. The motive for the carnage is the
most crass possible: the super-profits of the lying, scheming
capitalist corporations.
The only course away from disaster is an independent,
anti-war fightback. It cannot rely on old warhawks of either
capitalist party. But the current situation holds a real
promise that the masses of workers--now being squeezed between
a rock and a hard place--will fight to defend their own class
interests and will resist the dictates of the exploiting crooks
and criminals who have been running their lives.
Reprinted from the Aug. 29, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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